EMILY DICKINSON

Amber Shields

BIOGRAPHYEmily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 to a prominent family in Amherst, Massachusetts. In her youth she studied at Amherst Academy from 1840-1847. She then spent a short stint at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s house a mere seven months later. It was then that she took up writing. Her mother fell ill in the mid-1850s and Emily made it her duty to stay home with her at all times. She spent the next forty years of her life in seclusion. It was during this time that she began her ‘lasting legacy,’ many carefully composed manuscripts that eventually contained almost 800 poems. Very few of her poems were published during her lifetime, and those that were published were altered to fit the standards of the time. It was not until her untimely death on May 15, 1886 that most of her poems were actually discovered by her younger sister Lavinia. The first collection of her poetry was published in 1890 by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.

oBecause I could not stop for Death,oHe kindly stopped for me;oThe carriage held but just ourselvesoAnd Immortality.

oWe slowly drove, he knew no haste,oAnd I had put awayoMy labor, and my leisure too,oFor his civility.

oWe passed the school where children played,oTheir lessons scarcely done;oWe passed the fields of gazing grain,oWe passed the setting sun.

BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH

oOr rather, He passed Us;oThe Dews drew quivering and chill,oFor only Gossamer, my Gown,oMy Tippet only Tulle.

oWe paused before a house that seemedoA swelling of the ground;oThe roof was scarcely visible.oThe cornice but a mound.

oSince then 'tis centuries but eachoFeels shorter than the dayoI first surmised the horses' headsoWere toward eternity.

POEM ANALYSIS

Lyrical poem

Meter: alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter

Rhyme scheme: abcb

Personification of death and the sun

Anaphora of ‘we passed the’ in the third stanza

Theme: death

Speaker: a woman who speaks from the grave

Metaphor: We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground

LITERARY CRITICS

Margaret Dickie maintains that Dickinson’s poems were written as lyrics and should be examined as so, rather than as a whole.

Allen Tate observed that "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" is an extraordinary poem, even saying that “it deserves to be regarded as one of the greatest in the English language; it is flawless to the last detail.”

VIDEO

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqtbrv_emily-dickinson-because-i-could-not-stop-for-death_creation#